New tunes and an old store

With new album on the horizon, Frontier Ruckus to play FBC anniversary bash Friday at the Loft

Thursday, Nov. 29 — Playing over 1,000 gigs across the globe in the past five years hasn’t stopped Frontier Ruckus from recording a few acclaimed studio albums. And it appears their output isn’t slowing down: the Michigan band’s upcoming record, “The Eternity of Dimming,” fills two slabs of wax.

One thing is for sure — the band’s front man and songwriter Matthew Milia isn’t at a loss for words. The new record, to be released Jan. 23 by Quite Scientific Records, is an immense one.

“There are 20 songs, and it’s about an hour and a half long,” Milia told City Pulse back in May. “It’s going to be the highly-stigmatized double-record.”

“It’s a big piece of work,” he added. “It’s really huge. It’s just kind of our style. It’s all about over-abundance of memory and over-stimulation.”

Lansing-area Frontier fans who want to catch a sneak preview of other new songs have that chance Friday at The Loft. The band plays the Flat, Black & Circular (FBC) 35th Anniversary show, with openers Desert Noises and the Lansing Unionized Vaudeville Spectacle.

The show is to commemorate FBC’s 35th year in East Lansing. The upstairs indie-record shop, which sells everything from punk to classical LPs and CDs, has remained in the Campus Town Mall since co-founders Dave Bernath and Dick Rosemont opened it back in 1977. (Rosemont moved with his wife to Sante Fe in late 2010.)

FBC manager Jon Howard has also been a shop fixture since the ‘90s. The store is looking into booking another FBC Anniversary show in the coming months at Mac’s Bar.

Frontier Ruckus also has deep roots in East Lansing. The band got its start at Michigan State University in 2003. The group, which is now based on the east side of the state, unveiled a single from the new record this week. It can be found at their Bandcamp page here.

The band also includes David W. Jones (banjo, vocals, dobro), Zachary Nichols (horns, singing-saw, melodica, keys) and Ryan Etzcorn (drums, percussion). They spent months recording the new disc in Ann Arbor at the band’s go-to studio at Backseat Productions. It’s where the band’s recorded all of its full-length albums, which are lyrically centered on Milia’s “Orion Town myths.”

“We saw this new record as the finalization and the culmination of the trip — kind of like a trilogy of mythology that our first two full-lengths started,” Milia said.